Catherine of Aragon letter plea to Pope to save her marriage sells for £80,000

Last updated at 10:25 12 December 2006

A letter penned by Catherine of Aragon that records one of the defining moments behind England's split from the Roman Catholic Church went under the hammer for around £80,000 today.

The extraordinary three-page missive, written by Henry VIII's first wife in 1534 as she desperately tried to cling on to her marriage, was purchased by a private American buyer at Sotheby's in New York for US$156,000.

In the letter the estranged noblewoman begs her nephew, Roman Emperor Charles V, to ask Pope Clement VII to uphold her marriage to Henry.

The Pope obliged and the course of English religious history was changed forever when the king responded by turning his back on the Vatican.

Declaring himself the head of the new Church of England, he ordered the then Archbishop of Canterbury to grant him a divorce from Catherine, leaving him free to marry Anne Boleyn.

He had fallen in love with her several years earlier and, frustrated by Catherine's failure to provide him with a male heir, hoped Anne could do the job.

In the letter, written in Catherine's mother tongue of Spanish, she refers to the "great scandal of all Christendom" and how the king was living in sin that "brings about other sins every hour".

The letter, signed Katherina, the Queen of England, had been expected to fetch up to 150,000 dollars. It was sold to a phone bidder.

Catherine was desperate not only to retain her position, but that of her the royal couple's only surviving child, Princess Mary.

But ultimately her bid failed and the marriage was declared unlawful and Mary illegitimate.

Catherine did, however, avoid the being beheaded like two of her successors, and died of disease in 1536.